Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures)

by Terry Kroenung

  “Yes, sir,” agreed the colonel who’d questioned me earlier. “Heintzelman’s Corps, probing for a weakness. Guess he found out that there isn’t one in this army.”

  Everyone laughed but Lee, who still managed a small smile. I felt like a guest at somebody else’s family reunion, watching all of the young men cluster around the revered patriarch in search of praise, wisdom, or both. We didn’t have reunions at our house, there being just Ma and me. Now there’s just me. Hope that ain’t permanent.

  Lee stood up from the map table and tucked his spectacles in a pocket. Taking a sandwich somebody offered him, he said, “I wish I shared your optimism. That would leave me less anxious about tomorrow’s attack. Have we heard from General Jackson today?”

  A baby-faced major stepped forward, not much past twenty. “Yes, sir. He expects to have his corps ready in the morning. They’re moving now.”

  “I dearly hope they aren’t too worn out from all that fast marching from the Valley. I fear he pushes them too hard sometimes.”

  “General, he hasn’t let us down yet. His Foot Cavalry will give Little Mac a bloody nose, you wait and see.”

  “Well, waiting is all I can do now. I just---”

  Lee paused. A heavy silence fell over the room, as if everyone held their breath to hear what he’d say next. I was curious, too, seeing as how he stared straight at me with a surly frown.

  My colonel broke the tension. His face said that he hoped Lee didn’t bust him to Private for admitting me. “Ah, sir, this is Miss Mahoney. She claims to have a message for you and you alone.”

  The Rebel leader handed the sandwich over to whoever had given it to him. “Does she?”

  “She does.” Lee looked decidedly unhappy and the colonel felt that displeasure radiating his way. “We…agreed that she should stay till you returned. The information is highly sensitive.”

  “So she says.” I got a hard glare from the general. I tried my winning smile on him, but that just made him scowl some more. Okay, so much for my magical man-control. Now what?

  When in doubt, brazen it out. I stood up, brushed the crumbs from my overalls, and stared right back at him. Instead of my delicate charm, I switched to hard-edged spymistress. “I do say, sir. Your men were right to admit me, civilian or no. I did not ask for this assignment, but here I am, ready to do you and yours a great service, I think. Shall we go somewhere and talk or shall I walk back to Richmond and catch my train to New Orleans?”

  For a long moment I thought I’d overdone it. Then Lee took a long deep breath and said, “Major Taylor.”

  The youngster perked up. “Sir?”

  “I’ll be in the kitchen with Miss Mahoney for no more than five minutes. Make sure my horse is seen to. When we are done you will detail two men to make sure that the lady gets safely back to town.”

  “Understood, sir.” Marshall moved off to do his duty. Lee waved his hand to show me the route to the Widow Dabbs’ kitchen, which lay toward the rear of the house. With a polite nod I swept through the soldiers, who parted for me like the Red Sea for Moses. Well, maybe it was for their general, but it felt good anyhow.

  When the kitchen door had closed behind us, Lee crossed his arms and said, “So you’re a spy?”

  One part of me tried to maintain the character and the conversation while the other part of me spun wheels and gears to stay ahead of events. It was hard work. “You make it sound so…low.”

  “It’s just that you don’t look like most of the spies we employ. Don’t misunderstand me,” he smiled, raising a palm. “Intelligence either saves an army or breaks its back. I can’t afford to look down my nose at spies. Nor at crystal ball-gazer or tarot card readers, if they help me to win battles. We’re outnumbered here, as everyone knows except George McClellan. Is your information a help or a hindrance?”

  “Good question,” Jasper laughed in my thoughts. “Do you have any idea?”

  Thanks.Just what I need right now. Focusing on Lee, who eyed me like Zeus considering who would get the next thunderbolt, I said, “That depends on whether your army is a help or a hindrance…to me.”

  Lee burst out laughing. He even slapped his thigh. “You! And just who are you? Someone’s bedmate who overheard something she thinks she can profit from?”

  Whoa! So that explained his hostility. He thought I was a floozie, a soiled dove, even, trying to sell second-hand information. I had to rid him of that notion in a hurry, and just then a brilliant idea came to me.

  “No, sir,” I hissed, cold and sharp, “I am not here for money, not even the worthless bills of your runt government. I am here at the express direction of the Honorable Merchantry of Esteemed Gentlemen. My message comes straight from the Proprietor.”

  I knew I’d guessed right when the fear flashed in Robert E. Lee’s eyes. It only showed for a split-second, but I caught it. This veteran soldier, master of all men and every situation, had learned to be afraid of the Merchantry. Directly afraid. He knew it for true, not for what some folks believed second-hand. Either he’d fallen foul of it himself or…

  Or I wasn’t the first Merchantry representative to visit the Confederate government.

  That made awful sense. How else to explain this horrible useless war? The Merchantry was in it up to their eyeballs, of course. If they hadn’t manipulated things to get it started then they sure as heck were pulling strings to keep it going. Their shadow businesses no doubt traded with both sides in weapons, ships, food, and anything else profitable. No wonder Ernie and Romulus hated them so much.

  Give him credit. Lee tried to bluff his way through me, just like he did against the Union army. “The Proprietor? Oh, really? And who might that be?”

  “Like you know, either,” snickered Jasper.

  “Will you just hush and get ready to pull that ace we talked about?” I snapped with a thought.

  “OK, OK, don’t get huffy. Jeez.”

  “That won’t wash, General,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “You’ve already been spoken to by some of my friends, haven’t you?”

  Even now Lee played tough. I could see why McClellan feared him so much. He was nothing if not bold. “A pretty woman waltzes into my headquarters with no Merchantry password or sign and you expect me to just---”

  This was what I’d been waiting for, a reason to show my Merchantry bona fides and end the argument. I sent a thought to Jasper. Here’s hopin’ it works.

  The Stone flushed hot against my skin for an instant. The vizard glamour gave way to a passion glamour. Ripples of buzzing energy crawled across my face as the image changed. Instead of Alaena Mahoney, saucy Irlann temptress from New Orleans, Lee saw the thing he feared most, a terror pulled straight from his own mind by Jasper’s magick. I saw it flash in my own thoughts and shuddered.

  His daughter, her face cold and pale in fevered death.

  I found no mirror in the kitchen for me to check myself with, but Lee’s eyes were looking glass enough. The general, who’d seen countless men killed in battle—arms blown off by shells, brains splattered with musket balls—most feared his grown child’s end from simple sickness. His strong knees buckled. It wrenched my heart out to watch, but I had to press my advantage before I lost it.

  “You doubt me?” My voice now sounded gloppy, as if filled with new-turned grave dirt and maggots. “You think me a fraud?”

  “No!” he cried in a hoarse whisper, not wanting to alarm any of his men and let them see him in such a state. “I believe. Only a Merchantry mage could do such a thing.”

  I let the glamour fade back to Alaena. “Then listen well and you may never have to see me again. You begin an offensive against the Federal army tomorrow, yes?”

  “We do. We hope to destroy them utterly and end this war.”

  “You will not! You will only push them back. The Army of the Potomac shall live to fight another day. Do we understand one another?”

  After a long, sad pause Lee choked out, “Yes. I see. The war must go on.”

 
; I nodded. “It must. This is the will of the Proprietor.”

  To my amazement, Lee mastered himself in moments. Glaring at me, he snapped, “And that is all that matters, these days. I’ll give you your blood, much good may it do you.”

  Despite having been a soldier all of his life, Lee wanted a quick end to the war to minimize the carnage. Good for you, General.Please disobey this order, if you can. Even if it means my side loses. Enough is enough.

  “Then my mission is completed,” I drawled, all honey as if nothing awful had just happened. I turned to leave the kitchen, then whirled back, almost running smack into him. “Oh, one more thing, if you please. One of my men is undercover as a slave. He got careless and your pioneers have him working on entrenchments north of here. I need him back as soon as possible.”

  Lee pulled his order book from a pocket and scrawled out a very general message for the recipient to give me whatever I required. I tucked it into the top of my overalls, which must’ve looked like an impressive adult bosom to him. It got no reaction from the already-stunned Lee, though. We put on our best happy faces and returned to the sitting room. Everyone there did their best to act busy, as if they weren’t dying to know what had gone on in the kitchen. Too bad for them. Lee kept mum about the specifics.

  “No changes, gentlemen. We attack as planned tomorrow. Is the escort ready for Miss Mahoney?”

  Major Taylor said yes and to follow him outside. I curtsied to General Lee, who nodded once at me and turned back to the map. OK, I’ve been dismissed. Now where’s that escort?

  Two cavalrymen sat their horses, holding a mount with saddle for me. I froze. One was Tyrell, who grinned at me and touched his hat brim with a finger.

  The instant I saw him the Stone froze solid. Then the shooting began.

  25/ Pluto’s Bane

  The sword, locked tight in his spasming grip, turned bright orange and melted as if in a blacksmith’s forge.

  I call it shooting for lack of a better word. No bullets came our way. Tight purple flames with orangey sparks crackled from a line of bushes across Nine Mile Road. One blazed its way between Tyrell and his companion, a short blonde lieutenant who dove from his big bay horse and drew a pistol. The light blinded me for a second, contrasting so with the near-dark. As the thing passed it made a creepy thrumming noise, like a giant animal breathing. Everyone in the house either shouted or swore. Marshall ducked back inside, crying that the Yankees were firing rockets. If only they were. That’d be easier to handle. Tyrell stayed on Alcibiades, who reared up and neighed a challenge to our attackers. His LeMat roaring, the captain galloped up the road, parallel to the source of the magick flames, trying to draw their fire.

  But they meant that ambush for me. Somebody knew me, glamoured or not. Figuring that I needed my energy for defense, I dropped the vizard with a hurried thought to Jasper and crouched as low as I could. Three more of the tiny comets hissed overhead, lower this time. Yep, searchin’ for little old Verity. I didn’t know what would happen if one of them hit me, but sticking around to find out made little sense. I zigzagged in the opposite direction as Tyrell, a Morphageus shield on my left arm. For all I knew taking a hit on my shield would fry me just like a strike anyplace else, but I guessed not. After all, the Bullies’ magick had been repelled by it at the Monument.

  My attackers chased me with their bolts as I dove into a ditch. Watching the colored flames zip just overhead, I saw them hit trees and rocks. While I panted from fear and exertion, the violet pellets were absorbed into whatever they hit, to no obvious effect. No explosions, no charring, nothing. What the heck? Why were they bothering to shoot harmless ordnance? Tyrell and his fellow trooper sure weren’t firing blanks. They sent untold rounds at the source of the ambush. The bullets hit nobody that I could see and there was no slackening of the weird pulsing bullets heading in my direction. Now some of the officers in the Dabbs house added their guns’ voices to the barking of the cavalry. All that shooting earned them no more attention from the bushes than Tyrell got. Every enemy shot headed for me.

  With a whoop the short blonde Reb leaped back on his horse, snapped it into a tight circle, and drew his saber. Spurs digging into the bay’s flanks, he charged at full thundering gallop right at the ambushers. Tyrell hollered for him to stop, but the lieutenant’s blood must’ve been up. I had to hand it to him. Unseen foes using weapons not encountered by everyday mortals didn’t faze him one little bit. He was bound and determined to protect his general.

  That huge horse made my heightened senses feel the ground shake as if an avalanche came. Chunks of muddy turf flew up behind it. Waving his sword in figure-eight’s and screaming like a banshee, the young trooper sent his mount over a stone wall as if it were just a doorsill. Horse and rider had made it to within maybe thirty feet of the bushes when our attackers finally decided that they were a threat. The magick bolts shifted from me to my protector.

  Two of the purple bursts hit the lieutenant at the same time, sucked into his body just like with the trees behind me. He let out an awful sound, like somebody kicking a helpless puppy. His horse reared, threw him hard to the wet ground, and raced away in Tyrell’s direction. Shaking his head, the Reb staggered to his feet, the saber still in his gloved fist. For a second I thought he’d charge on foot, but then I saw the delayed effects of the enemy dreadful weapon. Their shots weren’t harmless, after all. They just worked on humans only.

  Breath left his body with a whoosh, as if a giant foot had been planted in his belly. Every muscle clenched tight and his back arched. Legs shaking, he threw his arms wide. The sword, locked tight in his spasming grip, turned bright orange and melted as if in a blacksmith’s forge. Now the purple fire returned, from inside him this time. The awful inner glow made his bones stand out in relief. Patches of gray-black appeared as his skin charred and flaked off in hunks. Where it did so the violet flame ran out, liquefied now, and poured thick down his body like horrible lava. Consumed from inside and out, but unable to move or scream, the poor brave Reb stood riveted to the ground, quivering. Soon all of him burned away, until nothing remained but ash and a beating heart. It thumped two or three times and then burst open with a bloody sigh. The gooey fire sank into the ground and disappeared.

  I heaved my sweet rolls into the ditch. Gettin’ tired of throwin’ up all the time. Gotta get outta here. To heck with this Stone-Warden thing.I’m way over my head. What is that stuff?

  “Pluto’s Bane,” Jasper said, answering my unspoken question. “Molten souls of the wicked dead.”

  “Is that so? And when did you plan on tellin’ me about that?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Well, I’m askin’ now!” I glanced over at Tyrell, who still stared open-mouthed at where his comrade had just been standing. The Stone continued to freeze my skin.

  “Comes from the Underworld, from Hades.”

  “Hades? There’s really a Hades? Like in mythology?” This just gets more fun by the minute.

  “In Graecia there is. When the Merchantry ruined the world that place returned to the time of the Peloponnesian War. And the gods of Olympus are real there.”

  I let out a sick laugh. Of course they are. “Who uses Pluto’s Bane? The Merchantry?”

  “Not usually. Too showy. They want to stick to the shadows, keep magick a secret. Not blaze away with purple fire that eats people. Bad for business.”

  “Yeah, but ain’t I bad for business, too? Maybe they’re gettin’ desperate.”

  “You’ve only been Stone-Warden for a few days. They want you in London. Why melt you now, and maybe the Stone and Morphageus, too?”

  I thought about that while crawling down the ditch, away from the house. It sat dark and silent, all lamps blown out. That must’ve been one terrified bunch of Rebs in there, hoping their attackers would forget about them. I sympathized. “Romulus said there’s renegade groups in the Merchantry, that they have their own Civil War brewin’. Could be one o’ those bunches, who don’t want the Stone t
o fall into Merchantry hands.”

  “Might be. We’ll have to look into that later. Right now gettin’ outta here would be good.”

  I was way ahead of him there. Behind us lay a bunch of rocks that that I could jump behind in quick stages, keeping under cover until I could put some distance between us and whoever wanted us really, really permanently dead. But just as I raised my head to see if the coast might be clear, that coast got awful crowded.

  Three people in darkest green crept toward me, holding short swollen-tipped staves in their gloved hands. Their faces were covered to the eyes with scarves and hoods, their shirts and trousers baggy and flowing. On their backs were swords, some curved, some straight. I’d seen them before and my blood froze. They were the three armed figures from my dream.

  Full-dark now. I used my witched eyes to look for the captain. Tyrell was nowhere to be seen. Figures. The Stone’d gone cold as soon as I’d laid eyes on him. I couldn’t understand how he’d masked himself from the Stone before, but now it knew him for what he was. Led these things right to me.I swear I’m gonna boomerang your Rebel skull if I see you again. My new friends aimed their deadly pole weapons at me. Purple pulses swirled around the tips.

  If I live through the next two minutes, that is.

  Heart pounding as if it wanted to flee my body (you ain’t leavin’ without me!) I whipped my head all around to see if any help might be on the way. Nope. McClellan had whole regiments defending him. Where was Lee’s bodyguard? Didn’t anybody see that General Lee’s headquarters was under attack? Did they have purple flames from hell flying around here all the time? The trio of enemies fanned out a bit to cut off my escape down the road in either direction. My only way out would be to run straight away from them to the north. Then they had a clear shot at my back. I wouldn’t get ten steps. Fifty feet, at most, separated us. Now or never. I jumped up, Morphageus shield covering me, and got ready for a desperate dash. Maybe if I zigzagged they’d miss me.